Nine Layers of Sky

by Liz Williams

  “Whatever they might be, they have been here for a very long time, hiding out in the silent places, the cold lands where few humans go. There is no sign that they use any kind of technology, yet there is evidence that they experiment on humans. And I suspect that if I was to take a sample of your blood, there would be matching DNA between you.”

  “What?” Ilya asked, blankly. He swung to face Kovalin. “Are you telling me that I am not human?”

  “Of course you’re not human,” Kovalin said impatiently. “Not as we understand it, anyway.”

  There was a short, charged silence.

  “And what are you?” Ilya asked finally. There was something about Kovalin’s eyes that deeply disquieted him. They seemed too dark, too opaque.

  “I am a member of an organization formed in the late nineteenth century, dedicated to solving the occult mysteries that seem to weigh so heavily upon us here in Russia. Rasputin was our last study—another man who took an unnaturally long time to die. The changes scattered us, drove us underground. We were persecuted as counterrevolutionaries. Now that the Soviet Union is no more, we have once again emerged. We began the century as mystics, but we ended it as scientists.”

  “And where do the rusalki come from, in your opinion? Another world? Like the little grey aliens of the Americans?”

  “In my opinion …” Kovalin considered the question for a moment. “They are from another world, but perhaps not in the sense that you might mean it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve said they do not use technology that we are aware of. No spaceships, no ray guns, no robots. And yet they have astonishing abilities—like your own, but much greater—and they are able to slip in and out of this reality.”

  “What makes you so sure they’re not supernatural, then?”

  “Did I say that I was sure? They are certainly supernatural, in one sense of the word. They do not obey physical laws as we know them.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Ilya asked.

  “Because we have only just tracked you down. I told you, our organization was thrown into upheaval during the last century, persecuted and scattered. Many of us went into the parapsychology programs run by the KGB, but the politicians disapproved of us. There weren’t many five-year plans for supernatural endeavors. Perestroika has proved a mixed blessing. We have regrouped; we have a measure of governmental approval, but like everyone else, little in the way of funds. I am on your side, Ilya Vladimirievitch Muromyets.” He used the patronymic without mockery. “I want to help. But in doing so, you can also help us.”

  “How?”

  “I told you that I have dissected a rusalka. In fact, I have had the privilege of examining one of the creatures. We captured it in the forests near our facility; it was weak and sick. In the folds of its clothing—a kind of robe—we found something. It was made of an unknown metal, but shaped like a fossil: an ammonite, perhaps. We removed the object and placed it in a safe container; it spun a hard web around itself, as if for protection. It now resembles a small black ball. A day later, a second rusalka entered the compound—we have no idea how, since it is guarded and sealed—and tried to seize the object. It took a great risk, and it was not successful. We killed it.”

  “How?” Ilya demanded.

  “We shot it before it had time to generate its illusions. It was deemed too dangerous to keep the object at the facility any longer, and so a member of the organization was sent south, to Uzbekistan. He has not made contact, and we don’t know what has happened to him. We searched the border traffic as best we could, but found nothing. Word has come, however, that traces of the thing have been detected in Almaty, in Kazakhstan. I would like you to find it.”

  The volkh’s gaze slid blandly away, and it was then that Ilya realized that Kovalin knew very well what this object might be, but was keeping it to himself. And the story he had just told seemed too glib, too rehearsed. Ilya’s long life had left him well able to smell out a lie. “Clearly, it seems to be valuable to them,” Kovalin went on smoothly.

  “What sort of traces?”

  “The object seems to have an effect on the world around it. Reality shifts, alters.”

  “How?”

  “Strange weather conditions, curious phenomena. Our information is limited.”

  “Why should I help you?” Ilya asked, sitting back down on the bed. “Why can’t you search for this thing yourself? Why, indeed, should I even believe you?”

  “Because I have other duties. And if you succeed, Ilya Muromyets, then we will help you achieve your greatest wish. We will help you to die.” His black gaze met Ilya’s own. He smiled blandly. “And because, quite frankly, you have nothing else. The tide of time has washed you up, and you have nowhere to go and no one to be. Why you, you ask? Because you are a hero, Ilya Muromyets, a sword for hire. Hopeless quests are what you do.”

  Interlude

  BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

  The old man was reading the newspaper when Anikova’s men blew his door off its hinges. In his confusion, he dropped the paper, knocking over the samovar and flooding the kitchen floor with tea, but he moved fast enough after that. No doubt he was aiming for the fire escape, in order to drop down onto the monorail tracks and lose himself in the heart of the city, but Anikova was too quick for him. He was halfway out of the window when she caught him by the braces and hauled him back.

  Something scuttled out from beneath the kitchen sink, and Anikova glimpsed hot-coal eyes in a mass of dark hair before the thing sank sharp teeth into her ankle. She swore.

  “Get it off me!”

  The old man gave a high cackle of laughter.

  “He doesn’t like you, the old Domovoi.”

  Anikova kicked out, sending the creature against the wall. It lay still for a moment, then slid back under the sink. Her ankle burned and she hoped the creature’s teeth had not been infected. Insanitary, horrible creatures; Central Command should enforce the regulations more stringently. If the situation had not been so serious, it might even had seemed comical, but Anikova was too angry to see the funny side of things. She held the blastgun to the old man’s head and snapped shockwire around his wrists. The old man grew slack and still.

  “Against the wall, now! Spread your arms.” Swiftly, Anikova checked his pockets, but found nothing except a box of matches and a ragged handkerchief. She threw them onto the table in disgust. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” The old man turned his head to look at her. His eyes were round and bland, offensive in their very disingenuousness.

  “You know very well what I am talking about. The distorter coil.”

  “What in the world is a distorter coil?”

  Anikova could have sworn that the old man was enjoying himself.

  “A piece of forbidden technology, stolen from Central Command’s laboratories. I know the dissidents passed it to you before they made it over the border. You were seen talking to them. I have a witness who swears that he saw it in your hand. You see? You can hide nothing from us.” Anikova mouthed the usual cliches with a confidence that she was far from feeling. Hide was what the old man had done most successfully up until now. “Answer my question.”

  “Or what?”

  Anikova stared at him in disbelief. It was impossible that a person should be unaware of the penalties for such a crime: a spell in the Gulag at the very least. Perhaps the man was mad, or simple, or arrogant enough to think that such a thing could never happen to him. It occurred to her that any or all of those reasons could explain his involvement with the insurgents in the first place.

  The Mechvor stepped forward and put a gentle hand on the old man’s arm. “It really would be better if you simply told us,” Kitai said. Her dark eyes, whiteless among the soft planes of her face, were filled with concern. “We care for all our citizens. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  The old man gave her an arch look. “Then you know what you can do, don’t you? You can leave me a
lone.”

  “We can’t do that,” the Mechvor said sadly. “You might fall into bad company. Some of your fellow sympathizers have already gone south, to the horse tribes. You don’t want to spend the rest of your days among barbarians, do you?”

  It occurred to Anikova that perhaps the old man thought the two women were practicing nothing more than some good cop/bad cop routine, that he was responding with a game of his own. It was not true. The Mechvor genuinely cared, unlike Anikova.

  She tapped Kitai on the shoulder. “You’re wasting your breath,” she said. The Mechvor turned, and just for a moment, Anikova felt a twinge inside her head; a neural toothache, sharp and stinging. She stumbled back.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered, hating herself for her weakness in front of the suspect. His face was turned back to the wall, but she knew he was grinning. The Mechvor put a placatory hand on Anikova’s arm.

  “I know how hard this is for you, Colonel,” she murmured. “Please try not to worry. I’m sure we can sort everything out to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  “All right,” Anikova said sourly. “I’ll let you deal with it.”

  “Would you like to stay here while I ask this poor misguided soul a few questions?”

  “No,” Anikova said. “I’ll wait outside.”

  In disgust, she picked up a handful of samizdat papers from the table and strode to the door. The light streamed into the passage, dappling the white plaster walls. Anikova went over to the window and looked out.

  Pre’gorod—First City—stretched all the way to the Northwest Gulf, the Red Star banner snapping over the roofs and golden domes, revealing silvery glimpses of sea. A carrier was coming down to the airport, falling from the sky like a great drop of rain. If Anikova craned her neck, she could see the monorail—aptly named the Bullet—streaking across the city. Down in the street, her own long siydna, hovering between the trees, gleamed in the evening sun.

  Anikova opened the window and breathed in clean air from the gulf, laden with salt and the tang from the herring fisheries, masked by the headier scent of the limes. Her siydna was already dusted with pollen; it danced up in yellow swirls beneath the vehicle’s stationing-jets.

  From up here, First City was quiet and well-ordered, everything and everyone in its place. But Anikova’s ankle still stung where the Domovoi had bitten through her boot, and she could hear the murmuring voice of the Mechvor from inside the old man’s apartment. From the corner of her eye, she saw the city shift: the buildings shrinking, becoming greyer and smaller, the trees withering. Anikova grew cold. These glimpses of another, lesser reality seemed to be growing, but few people were prepared to talk about it. Except the dissidents. And she remembered with deep unease the heretical thoughts that her father had increasingly begun to voice before he fell into the breach all those years ago: We are stealing from them, you know. From the Motherland, from Russia itself. We are leaching their dreams, to fuel our world. The better it gets here, the worse it becomes on Earth. And that was the key to her own long uncertainty. But now I know it’s true. Central Command has told me so. Yet what right do we have? Are we not a nation of dream-stealers, thereby? And are we poisoning our world by our actions, diminishing ourselves?

  Restlessly, Anikova returned to the door and peered through. The old man was now sitting at the table, with Kitai bending over him. In the lamplight, the Mechvor could have been his granddaughter, neat in her dark uniform, but Anikova glimpsed the form of her avatar within her silhouette: a black, twisting embryo. Anikova did not wait to see any more. She closed the door behind her and leaned against the wall.

  She could not stop herself from listening, but there was nothing to hear, and that was the worst thing of all.

  Part Two

  One

  RUSSIAN FEDERAL REPUBLIC / KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

  Ilya Muromyets’ great black sword, concealed in a fishing-rod case, rested at his shoulder. A packet of sunflower seeds weighed down his pocket and a shot of low-grade heroin—the very last, Ilya told himself— sang through his veins. The train rattled through the suburbs of St. Petersburg, gathering speed once it reached the flat whiteness of the steppes.

  It was a Tuesday in early March, hardly the best time for traveling, and the compartment was almost empty. Ilya had only one companion: a middle-aged woman with a disappointed face. Her gaze passed over Ilya’s shabby appearance with distaste, and for the rest of the day she devoted herself to a pile of true-crime magazines. A hardened soul, Ilya thought dreamily. Russia was full of them, had always been. But a hard soul was almost always the shell for a wounded heart, or so they said. Ilya felt that his head was stuffed full of aphorisms, like a pudding with raisins, the trite detritus of a too-long life.

  He felt sorry for the woman and blearily offered her a handful of the sunflower seeds. She declined, which did not greatly surprise him. His face, reflected in the dirty window of the train, was stripped down to its Slavic bones. His eyes were hectic, the pupils pin-pricks.

  The journey passed in a haze of drugged speculation. It would not have astonished him to learn that he had simply imagined Kovalin’s visit. Perhaps he was wholly mad, nothing more than a casualty of a broken Russia, part of the flotsam washed up on time’s shores. Maybe he was indeed no more than forty-five, a demented soul pretending to be an eight-hundred-year-old hero. And what had happened to the others over the years: the Nightingale Bandit, Manas of the Kyrgyz Mountains, Mikula, Svyatogor? He had not seen any of these men for years, and it had not been for want of looking.

  Perhaps, as he suspected with distant envy, they were dead at last, or had retreated into the wilderness, just as he himself had done for a time before once more seeking life in the grimy, teeming cities of the Ukraine and western Russia.

  But Ilya could not imagine what reality he could be fleeing from, what worse thing could possibly have befallen him than that which had happened already. Surely the truth was more terrible than madness. He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and took out the paper that Kovalin had given him. There was a telephone number on the piece of paper, a contact within Kovalin’s organization.

  We have ended the century as scientists, Kovalin had said, but Ilya wondered if this was really true. The man seemed to reek of sorcery, yet he was the only meaningful thing that Ilya had left. And he had promised death. For that tenuous hope, Ilya was prepared to believe almost anything.

  But try as he might, Ilya could not reach a satisfactory explanation as to why Kovalin had chosen him for this task. Surely Kovalin had his own people on which to call? The only answer must be that tracking the object was dangerous—perhaps so dangerous that only an indestructible person could do the job. But the situation reminded Ilya too strongly of a day over eighty years before, when another mysterious official had sent him on a similar quest. And that adventure, not long after the Revolution, had ended in Siberia where, surrounded by death in the bitter winter, he had, as usual, survived.

  Memory took him back as though the intervening years had never been. The railway line ran arrow-straight from Moscow to Petrograd, aside from the bend known as the Tsar’s Elbow, but the closer they drew to the Gulf of Finland, the edgier Ilya became. When the train drew past Kalinin, crossing the frozen artery of the Volga, the signs of revolution became even more apparent: the artillery forces outside the town, soldiers stumbling through the snow. The train thundered through, leaving the troops behind.

  Ilya leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. The operative, one of Dzerzhinsky’s men in the new police force they called the Cheka, had been oblique. The target was engaged in counterrevolutionary activities; he had set up a secret laboratory in the forests and had collaborated with Germans. His eradication was essential to the security of Lenin’s new state. Ilya, weary of war, did not care to question too greatly what he had been told.

  He felt like a bowstring, nerves tightly wound along the Petrograd line. They passed wave after wave of forest. An officer moved down the train, collec
ting papers. Ilya handed his over with barely a glance. The officer passed on. The outskirts of Petrograd appeared through the window of the train.

  Ilya waited until the train had left Petrograd and headed north. The carriage was crowded now, filled with soldiers. It was past noon, the sun a round coin behind the clouds. Ilya took a slab of bread and cheese from his pocket and ate it, staring out of the window at the white expanse of the Gulf of Finland. They were not far from the border. He recalled the Cheka official’s instructions. You will see a church with a broken dome, then a damaged house. You will have to leave the train at that point. After that comes the forest. The building is perhaps a mile from the ruins of the village, heading northwest toward the sea. Ilya kept close watch through the window and at last saw the church with the fallen dome by its side. Stained wood showed through the faded gilt. The house was no more than a wall, scarred by fire.

  Snow began to fall, whirling in from the gulf, cold salty air gusting through the cracks in the carriage. As the train slowed down and the forest once more began to press in upon the track, Ilya got to his feet and made his way along the train. The soldiers watched him with indifference. The train seemed endless: row upon row of the same grey faces, the same patched uniforms. Ilya stepped over guns, over packs, over men’s boots until he reached the last carriage of all. He made his way to the end, conscious of eyes on his back, and hauled open the door.

  He stepped out onto the little ledge at the back of the train, into the sudden punch of cold air, and pulled the door closed behind him. He put his hands on the rail. The track stretched away until it became lost in the trees. Making sure that the sheath of the sword was settled firmly across his shoulders, and that the pack containing the explosives was securely fastened, Ilya swung over the railing and dropped down onto the track. The train trundled away. Ilya stumbled over the rails and into the forest, then leaned against a pine to catch his breath. After the musty, sweat-soaked air of the train, the forest was a blessing. Ilya began to track toward the sea, noting fallen branches and the way the light fell, taking care not to circle back.